Are you overwhelmingly exhausted in parenting?
Are you feeling emotional distance from your children?
Are you feeling completely ineffective in your parenting?
Do you sometimes dream of escaping?
You’re likely experiencing parental burnout.
Yes, it’s a real thing. This is not in your imagination.
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When an individual arrives at this point, they may wonder, How did this happen to me? How did I get here? It’s simple math, really. Burnout occurs when risk factors outweigh a parent’s resources.
Let’s take a look at common risk factors, according to research:
• perfectionist parenting
• lack of impulse control
• lack of ability to manage emotion and stress
• lack of support from co-parent or social network
• have children with chronic illness or disability that affect daily living
• work part-time or work from home
• both partners work full-time outside of home
• over-scheduled kids
• inability to provide structure
• too much intervention in kids’ lives
I think we can all agree that we live in an era when these risk factors are very common. On their own, these risk factors don’t cause burnout. When they start to pile up, and when a parent has little to no resources to counteract them, burnout is the almost inevitable result.
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Our society glorifies busyness, but we are beginning to see pushback. Families are craving more intentional scheduling to create more togetherness.
This shift is essential, because the consequences of parental burnout are grave. In fact, one study noted that it “drastically increases escape and suicidal ideation, child neglect, and child violence” (Mikolajczak et al., 2018).
Perhaps most alarming is that thoughts of suicide and escape are even more frequent in parental burnout than in job burnout or depression.
Other negative effects include substance abuse, sleep disorders, partner conflict, and partner estrangement.
In other words, no good comes from this condition. We cannot sacrifice our health and our children’s health at the altar of productivity.
Does any of this sound familiar to you? If so, check out our next post for suggestions. If you need immediate help, please call 911 or the National Suicide Prevention Hotline or text CONNECT to 741741.
Mikolajczak, M., Brianda, M.E., Avalosse, H., & Roskam, I. (2018). Consequences of parental burnout: Its specific effect on child neglect and violence. Child Abuse & Neglect 80, 134-45.